Recycling Lives Expands Into South East With 9th UK Site

16th Jan, 2018

You may already be familiar with our relationship to Recycling Lives; as a leading waste management firm, it’s the parent company of Scrap Car Network. We’re very proud of this association, especially in light of Recycling Lives’ incredible growth throughout 2017. Recently, it’s acquired its ninth site nationally – its fifth in just twelve months! This means that under the Recycling Lives umbrella, at Scrap Car Network we’re now able to bring our acclaimed car scrapping services to a whole new region of the country. And it doesn’t stop there…

A Year Of Incredible Growth

Recycling Lives’ latest facility is in Erith, Kent, and was formerly known as Pick-a-Part. The RL team was determined not to let Erith’s existing local talent go to waste, leading them to secure the jobs of 12 staff in the takeover, with plans to create even more jobs within the business. It’s the latest addition to Recycling Lives’ network of sites across the UK; having started last year with four locations in Lancashire, over the space of just twelve months our parent company has opened five more premises in Cumbria, Greater Manchester, Merseyside, Midlands, and now the South East, allowing Scrap Car Network to depollute and recycle greater numbers of scrap cars than ever. (It’s worth noting that these are just the premises directly managed by Recycling Lives. We’ve not even touched upon the areas we already service using our massive network of scrap car dealer partners!)

It’s all perhaps best summed up in the words of the Managing Director, William Fletcher: “The move tops off our biggest year to date. We’ve tripled our turnover and more than doubled our national footprint.”

This is especially impressive given Recycling Lives’ humble beginnings. It started as a family-owned scrap metal business over 40 years ago. Now, more than four decades in operation has resulted in its evolution into our parent company as we know it today: a multi-award winning organisation with uniquely social business model, and a national reach. With the benefit of Recycling Lives’ resources, Scrap Car Network processes all end-of-life vehicles with state-of-the-art machinery, including Europe’s only fully digitised fragmentiser.

So What’s Next For Recycling Lives?

Recycling Lives regard itself first and foremost as a social business. All of our parent company’s commercial operations (including the vehicle recycling services we run as Scrap Car Network) go towards supporting a variety of social initiatives. First there’s the environmental aspect: ultimately, the aim is to succeed in diverting 100% of waste from landfill, and create a truly circular economy. Plus, the proceeds from these operations also go towards managing Recycling Lives’ own residential facilities, which provide a safety net for homeless, marginalised men.

Besides these, Recycling Lives runs an offender rehabilitation programme in nine prisons throughout the North West, which have been proven to be effective in reducing reoffending. As well as this, its staff operates a widespread food distribution programme in partnership with FareShare, aiming to reduce food waste and tackle poverty.

We’re happy to say that these initiatives are seeing excellent results: in 2015/16, Recycling Lives generated £4.1 million of social value through its activities, and 37 out of 38 participants in its rehabilitation programme did not reoffend. In addition to car scrapping, Recycling Lives is now looking to introduce these initiatives to more locations throughout the South East – a process which will be vastly helped by the addition of its newest premises.

“We’re proud to have secured the jobs of a great team in Erith,” said William. “And we’re excited to introduce our unique business offering to the South East!”

Don’t forget, we couldn’t do all this alone. When you choose us to scrap your car, you’re helping too! To start with, you’re ensuring that your car gets scrapped in the most environmentally friendly way possible, and you can be happy in the knowledge that the proceeds are going to an excellent cause. Just head on over to our homepage to enter in your car reg and postcode, and in no time at all you’ll be looking at your very own instant online quote!